Holding Up the Sky (11 page)

After supper, we took the group to the drive-in for a night out. This time it was the Hilton boys who were in their comfort zone and they enjoyed sharing the novelty with their Smero friends. Though drive-ins were now desegregated, very few black people chose them as their evening entertainment–they lacked the vital ingredient of a car. When we arrived the young, white gate attendant gave us steely-eyed condemnation along with our tickets. We found a spot at the back and sixteen eager teenagers hastily disembarked from the two vehicles. They split up into twos and threes to explore all the drive-in had to offer, the groups now well mixed between the two schools. Robbie and I stayed with the cars while keeping an eye out for our charges. As the movie was about to start each group reappeared, some taking seats inside the kombi, others on the deck chairs we had spread out around the loud speaker. A mixed group such as ours was such a rare sight that it seemed everybody in the drive-in had one eye on us for signs of trouble.

But it wasn't until interval that trouble began. About half a dozen of the boys went to the shop to buy supplies for the second half. Apparently some other teenage boys had questioned the presence of the Smero guys in the queue, saying they should wait until everyone else had been served. Their new Hilton friends took offence and by the time Robbie and I arrived, the shouting was about to erupt into a brawl. We exchanged glances, quickly assessed the mood and got everybody out of there. Both of us knew that Hilton College would not take kindly to its boys being in a public brawl while under our care, so we decided to cut short our evening entertainment and take everyone back to Phezulu.

All the way back home in the kombi the boys replayed the scene, full of bravado and testosterone. However, later on over coffee at Phezulu, the Smero guys explained that they often avoided town simply to save themselves that kind of harassment. A few of the Hilton boys were stopped short by this–their backgrounds had provided them with easy access to any public space–and they began to ask questions about their friends' lives and what it was like to be black in South Africa. I took this as my signal to head off to bed, the hard labour of the day suddenly hitting me after the drama of our evening had subsided.

As I lay in bed, my mind drifted over the last day and a half. It was amazing to think these teenagers had so little contact with each other that it was like introducing people from different countries. I remembered when I had first arrived in 'Maritzburg, thinking all white people heartless for doing nothing to challenge the situation that was unfolding before me. By now I had realised people were kept apart to such a degree that it was possible not to know. The media was censored and the only black person you were likely to meet in your white world would be cleaning your home. Not surprisingly, it would be most unwise for someone in your tenuous employ to start challenging your world view. And if you did want to find out, it was not as straightforward as driving into the townships to see for yourself. The only way was to be invited, and that required knowing someone who would trust you enough to tell you the truth. I saw that our program would provide a touch point for many young South Africans, allowing them to talk to each other and see a glimpse of each other's lives. With these thoughts in my mind, I drifted off to a well-earned sleep, believing I had done a good day's work.

Steve, being a church minister, was frequently asked to preach on a Sunday. When these requests coincided with a program, we often took the group along. So by 8.30 the next morning, the guys were clean and well presented as they gathered outside a suburban church that, like the drive-in, rarely saw a mixed congregation. As we entered, all eyes were on us, something I was fast becoming used to. The church service was the same as any suburban service the world over. However, the singing this day certainly benefited from a few well-placed tenors in the congregation. I am often asked if black people are natural singers or possessed of innate rhythm. While it may be a genetic gift, what I have seen is that people simply do a lot of it. Song and movement are so much a part of family and community life that I suspect people improve with practice regardless of their natural talent or lack thereof. On this particular morning, it was clear that I and some of the Hilton boys could have done with a little more practice. When it was time for the service Steve stood up and, instead of taking to the pulpit, stood on the stairs in front. Steve spoke, as he always did, in a masterful way that blended the designated bible reading with the challenges that we faced in our daily work. He told stories of the individuals we met and asked where God was in their suffering. He suggested that God was big enough to accommodate each one of us in this divided country and that our responsibility was simply to engage. I always loved hearing Steve speak. He had a way of helping me stay connected to both my faith and my work without feeling the need to ‘switch off' one commitment in order to believe in the other. Looking at the faces of the young men around me, I suspected they had been similarly affected and they seemed pleased to be part of what we were trying to achieve.

After church we returned home to run our next session of the program. This was to be facilitated by me on the topic of democracy and leadership. These issues had very different connotations in the white and black communities and my job was to help the boys thrash out their ideas on the subject, allowing them to build a common understanding of what democracy and leadership would look like in South Africa in future.

I had been facilitating groups since I was fifteen through my local church youth group, though I found this work much more complex in workshops such as these. I struggled to find the right balance between stretching and coaxing, pushing and pulling. Often the black participants would feel I didn't go far enough and the white participants, that I'd gone too far–and both would tell me so. There was always a risk of being labelled ‘too political' by the white schools in town and having them withdraw their participation. Alternatively, the township youths could perceive us as having sanitised the issues to protect the white participants, and label us irrelevant. It was a fine line and I regularly found myself crossing it, or not going quite far enough. Thankfully, Robbie was always there as a backup for me if things were starting to unravel. His calm demeanour gave him a credibility that I lacked and I found he was equally impactful with both black and white kids. Over time, slowly, slowly, I learnt to hone my craft, reading the room for its undercurrents. In all honesty, though, my passion for the underdog meant that if I erred on one side it was to be too hard on the white participants, something for which Robbie would often pull me up.

During the session, some of the bonds of new friendship that had been forged began to creak and strain as the group debated democracy. The Smero guys were understandably passionate about the right to have their say on how the country was run, despite at this time having no right to vote. As a result, they saw red when the Hilton boys explained that politics was not an issue and they didn't care whether they voted or not. A heated debate ensued on the nature and value of politics, with the black guys explaining that everything that happened in their lives was political, including getting harassed by racists at the drive-in, or being stared at when they went to a suburban church, or the fact that they couldn't go to a school like Hilton with all its privileges and wealth. Naturally, this put the Hilton guys on the defensive and it took all my facilitation skills to bring the debate to a productive close.

Not surprisingly, lunch was somewhat subdued. From the looks on people's faces, I suspected they were wondering how to make it work, both between themselves after the program ended and in the country generally when there was such a chasm between them. These thoughts were carried through into the afternoon session as we debriefed the last two days. One of the Smero guys, Mavuso, in answer to the question, ‘What was most striking about this weekend?' said, ‘Yesterday I saw a woman work like a man'. Gratified as I was by this backhanded compliment, I rolled my eyes at the thought of the work still to be done on issues of gender. But most of the comments were positive ones where each person expressed how they had come to the weekend with one set of beliefs about other people and were leaving with another. While they were unsure what to do with this new knowledge as they returned to their old lives, they all felt that something special had opened up for each of them.

Between them, the guys had agreed to arrange a school exchange where they would each spend a day at the other's school. We agreed to support them with this idea but I secretly wondered if it would not be salt in the wounds for the Smero guys to see Hilton College for themselves. Still, it was clear from the debrief that the program had been a real eye-opener for all. They appreciated seeing something of each other's lives, but most of all they valued meeting people from a different race and finding friends among them. This was clearly something they had not expected.

Robbie, Steve and I watched them say their goodbyes as the Hilton bus drew away and remarked on the stark contrast to their arrival two days before. Now, only the Smero guys were left and Robbie and I loaded them into the Sizwe vehicles for the convoy home. Given that many boys lived far from the school, we usually dropped them at their homes one by one. For me, this further emphasised the gulf between the lives of the two groups as we dropped each boy off at a tiny shack or a small brick four-roomed house. Driving away, I wondered how they would explain their weekend to their family and friends.

Generally, I found this afternoon drive somewhat depressing– saying goodbye to each new friend burst the bubble of possibility that had existed for me during the program. While the programs were always tiring, I also found myself completely taken up into the delicate relationships that were forming, both between people and also between the individual and a new way of looking at the world. It was engaging stuff and when it was over I often found that the cottage felt particularly empty. Steve and his family tended to keep to themselves after an event, Robbie and Themba would have gone home, and Mama Jenny often took the opportunity of having the next day off to go visiting overnight in the township.

I am, at heart, a gregarious soul and the return to Phezulu was like coming down off some kind of pharmaceutical high. I would often spend my own day off in the township so as not to be alone. I had few friends in town and the few I did know were friends of Steve's and therefore mostly married with children. In hindsight, it is clear to me that part of my need to make valuable use of my time was also to do with my fear of being alone. Some kind of grey mist lay there for me and I did what I could to avoid it.

My first program was a thrill for me from start to finish, which was a good thing as we would run two or three a month until the Christmas holidays. When I wasn't doing set-up or follow-through on programs, I was getting to know people in the township through my connection with Robbie and the members of Sizwe's management committee. I got to know Sipho and Mdu through Sizwe and through them, some other high-profle young leaders in the area, such as Skhumbuzo, Thami and others. My own community contacts began to grow, as well as my relationships with people who ran organisations that worked in the area.

One of those organisations was PASCA, the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness. I had first met them when we ran a program at the centre in Nonsuch Road where they took a session briefing our participants on the situation in the township. I became friends with Monica, an amazing German woman whose own son spent more time in detention than at home. She and her husband had moved to South Africa years before with their young family and over time they had all become deeply committed to the struggle against apartheid while still remaining members of the local Lutheran church.

Monica introduced me to a group that she was part of called the Imbali Support Group. The intention was to support families in Imbali who were affected by the violence there. Whether politically active or not, many families were being attacked in their beds as they slept. It was quoted to me more than once that year that Imbali had become the most dangerous place on earth. Murders and assassinations were commonplace and a running tally was kept by each side of the conflict. In a strange way, it was monitored like a daily share price by those living and working in the community.

In the late 1980s, politics in South Africa had such a viciousness to it after decades of more covert violence, that it was inconceivable to imagine that the following year Mandela would be released and the worm would turn. In 1989, the townships were boiling cauldrons and Imbali was one of the worst. We supported those families who were high risk by being visible in their homes by day and by night, in the hope that the presence of a white skin would deter attackers. We also hoped that when we as white people called for help, it might come. As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old I enthusiastically launched myself into the thick of it, completely disregarding the danger of such work. I became fast friends with Sipho during this time as his family frequently offered their hospitality to members of the support group.

Sipho wasn't classically good-looking but clearly had something as there was always a bevy of eager young women following him around. He was about my height, rather thin, and had a very round face which seemed slightly too large for his body. He had no features that could be described as handsome but he had intelligence and wit, and a mouth that was constantly getting him into trouble. When Sipho wasn't charming some beautiful girl, he was deeply involved in the community politics of the area. While he was too young to be in the senior ranks of the leadership, he was taken seriously by them. In another life, he would have been a philosopher or a political scientist; in this one, he was a United Democratic Front activist. The UDF was closely affiliated to the then banned ANC and though Sipho's family, many years before, had had cultural ties to the Zulu political party Inkatha, they were now actively UDF. The lines were drawn.